“An individual,” she said quietly, “one soul expressed completely in a single person, I mean, is exceedingly rare.  Not often is a physical instrument found perfect enough to provide it with adequate expression.  In the lower ranges of humanity—­certainly in animal and insect life—­one soul is shared by many.  Behind a tribe of savages stands one Savage.  A flock of birds is a single Bird, scattered through the consciousness of all.  They wheel in mid-air, they migrate, they obey the deep intelligence called instinct—­all as one.  The life of any one lion is the life of all—­the lion group-soul that manifests itself in the entire genus.  An ant-heap is a single Ant; through the bees spreads the consciousness of a single Bee.”

Henriot knew what she was working up to.  In his eagerness to hasten disclosure he interrupted—­

“And there may be types of life that have no corresponding bodily expression at all, then?” he asked as though the question were forced out of him.  “They exist as Powers—­unmanifested on the earth to-day?”

“Powers,” she answered, watching him closely with unswerving stare, “that need a group to provide their body—­their physical expression—­if they came back.”

“Came back!” he repeated below his breath.

But she heard him.  “They once had expression.  Egypt, Atlantis knew them—­spiritual Powers that never visit the world to-day.”

“Bodies,” he whispered softly, “actual bodies?”

“Their sphere of action, you see, would be their body.  And it might be physical outline.  So potent a descent of spiritual life would select materials for its body where it could find them.  Our conventional notion of a body—­what is it?  A single outline moving altogether in one direction.  For little human souls, or fragments, this is sufficient.  But for vaster types of soul an entire host would be required.”

“A church?” he ventured.  “Some Body of belief, you surely mean?”

She bowed her head a moment in assent.  She was determined he should seize her meaning fully.

“A wave of spiritual awakening—­a descent of spiritual life upon a nation,” she answered slowly, “forms itself a church, and the body of true believers are its sphere of action.  They are literally its bodily expression.  Each individual believer is a corpuscle in that Body.  The Power has provided itself with a vehicle of manifestation.  Otherwise we could not know it.  And the more real the belief of each individual, the more perfect the expression of the spiritual life behind them all.  A Group-soul walks the earth.  Moreover, a nation naturally devout could attract a type of soul unknown to a nation that denies all faith.  Faith brings back the gods....  But to-day belief is dead, and Deity has left the world.”

She talked on and on, developing this main idea that in days of older faiths there were deific types of life upon the earth, evoked by worship and beneficial to humanity.  They had long ago withdrawn because the worship which brought them down had died the death.  The world had grown pettier.  These vast centres of Spiritual Power found no “Body” in which they now could express themselves or manifest....  Her thoughts and phrases poured over him like sand.  It was always sand he felt—­burying the Present and uncovering the Past....